


The Saucepan

by Jessa



Series: One-shots and Drabbles [15]
Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy, finnlo - Fandom
Genre: Batuu, Enemies to Partners, HEA, Kissing, M/M, Pillowfort Rarepairs Challenge, Planets, elderly!finnlo, finnlo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-20
Updated: 2019-01-20
Packaged: 2019-10-13 03:33:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,038
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17480357
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jessa/pseuds/Jessa
Summary: Imagine finnlo had years and years behind them. How would they reminisce? Maybe like this...





	The Saucepan

They both still have it. They never really lost it, even though it’s been decades now since the end of the Cold War.

“Do you remember Batuu?” Finn asks, catching his breath to wait for Ben.

They’re clamoring down the incline in the semi-darkness, Finn more quickly than Ben and he’s stopped for a moment to wait. His lower center of gravity always did give him the edge when it came to agility, and that hasn’t changed. Ben always was kind of gangly and that hasn’t changed either, but they’re both still fit enough for this. A walk in the evening.

“Where?” Ben huffs, grasping for Finn’s proffered forearm as he lands with a jolt on the semi-flat patch of grass. They’re nearly down now.

“Batuu,” Finn repeats. “Here, give me your hand.”

Finn steers Ben the rest of the way but somehow Ben still manages to only finish the last of the hill by sliding down on his backside. Finn pulls him to his feet at the bottom and he takes a moment to recover, although he tries to hide it by brushing Finn away for a moment. Still proud.

Finn smiles because more and more Ben looks like his dad. The same contrapposto stance, still the same hair and now just as silver as the very last time they ever saw Han, and the very same walk. Although these days the gait is a much stiffer swagger than it was when Ben and Finn first met on Jakku. Finn fell in love with that walk. He’s still in love with that walk.

“That old rock?”

“Yeah,” Finn chuckles, waiting for Ben to find his composure; he woke up sore today, but the warm Chandrilan air still seems to help both his joints and Ben’s. “You wanna go over there to sit down?”

“Sure,” Ben says. “Just, slow though, yeah?”

“Okay.”

Finn hooks his arm around Ben’s and they walk together into the field beyond the shadow of the bridge.

“So, what about it?”

Slowly they lower themselves to the grass. It’s cooler than the air but it still smells like the heat of the day. Like warm sun on earth and there’s a sweet scent still lingering, even though the sachi blossoms have closed now the moon is out, and almost all the daylight is gone. The flowers only chase the sun but there’s just enough left of it to merge with the growing moonlight. The men take on an ethereal, coppery hue as dusk settles around them, and they settle down in the grass.

“Did you ever look at the sky from Batuu?” Finn asks.

He lies back in the grass and after a moment or two, so does Ben. They lie together and look up at the sky. There are no clouds overhead. It’s just full of stars and one moon waning.

Ben thinks for a moment.

“Yeah, sure, probably. Why?”

“Well,” Finn says, “I think _that_ constellation is visible from Batuu.”

“Which one?”

“That one,” Finn says, pointing to it. “That one there, see it?”

“No.”

“There’s a handle,” Finn says, wriggling closer to Ben, pressing his cheek against his temple so their sightlines nearly align, and Finn points up and waves his index finger across the sky to indicate three stars in a horizontal row. “And then _that_ part _there,_ those four stars, they look like a square. And so that makes it look like a…”

“Pot,” Ben says. “Like a saucepan, right?”

“Yeah,” Finn says, smiling. “Exactly like a saucepan. That’s _The Saucepan._ Did you ever notice that, Ben? When we were on Batuu? Did you ever notice _The Saucepan?”_

“Was that after Jakku or before?”

“What?”

“Batuu. After or before Jakku?”

“After. We went to Batuu _after_ Jakku. We met on Jakku, remember?”

“I wouldn’t forget that, Finn.”

“I know,” Finn says gently, because sometimes Ben gets a little forgetful but he still remembers most things, and always the most important.

“Okay,” Ben says.

“But you did, right?”

“What? Notice it?”

“Aha.”

“Well, yeah,” Ben says. “I did notice things back then. I noticed you.”

Finn grins.

“I like this,” he says.

“What do you like?” Ben asks.

“Lying here with you and looking at the sky.”

“It’s nice,” Ben says. “I like it too, it reminds me of when I was a kid. Going on trips.”

“With your dad?”

“Yeah.”

“You’ve told me about this before.”

“I know,” Ben says. “Nevermind.”

“No, tell me, I’m sorry,” Finn says. “I didn’t mean to stop you.”

Ben smiles.

“Yes you did.”

Finn turns to face Ben, who’s still looking up at _The Saucepan._

“Tell it one more time. Please?”

He stares at Ben’s profile in the starlight and listens to the story again.

“My father used to take me to pod races. It was okay. But the very best part was at nighttime, just as it was growing dark and we used to do this. Just lie on the ground and watch the stars come out and he used to just talk on and on about stuff. Most of what he said I used to tune out. Instead I just used to listen to the sound of his voice, really, not so much what it said, and look at the stars and imagine what they were like. Wonder if some of them were planets and what they’d be like to be on. And sometimes I’d just fall asleep, because his voice used to kind of drone, but I liked that about it. And I liked the stars in the dark. Those, and his voice, reminded me of here. Of being right here. Doing that right here. Kind of like we are now, Finn. And later on, when I was grown, before I met you, I used to do it sometimes then, too. Look up at the stars and imagine his voice and think about that. It was never back here, though. I never came back here then. But I thought about it always, when I did it. Home. Here.”

“Ben?”

“Yeah?”

“I never get sick of hearing that story, do you know that?”

Ben smiles. He does know that. He rolls over and kisses Finn. Beneath _The Saucepan_ , but not alone.

**Author's Note:**

> In response to the January 2019 StarWarsRareShipsChallenge prompt ‘planets’ - I got Batuu :)
> 
> And 'The Saucepan' really is a star constellation visible during Australian summertime. It's actually just a small part of Orion's Belt. I'm not quite sure why I chose it for this story XD but there was something nice about it... like, just kind of comforting and domestic I guess, because I grew up looking at it, and that fit with the idea here to imagine the floofiest ending to the way these two began on Jakku, so many years ago, opposed but on the same side of a Star War lol.
> 
> And last thing, I'm still not even sure that what Ben says at the end makes sense, but I can imagine my dad who's in his 70s saying something like that, and idk about anyone else but I feel like when I listen to someone reminiscing like that it's not the words but the way they're being said that makes you feel the nostalgia they sort of mean, or are feeling themselves and remembering. So they are talking and you are listening for a feeling, not for the logic. So, I kind of think I don't mind that Ben rambles on in that spot, and I don't think Finn does either XD
> 
> Anyway, hope you like it and thanks a lot for reading it. And special thanks to tehanufromearthsea and leoba for beta reading <3


End file.
